Their Questionable Observer Detector (QuOD) can process any available video clips of groups of people present at the scene of event, spanning different times and locations to pick out any person who appears frequently in them. “The idea is that the person showing up unusually often as part of the crowd at these events may be someone that the police would want to talk to,” says Bowyer.

Now a full service entertainment company, SuicideGirls have produced a series of longform documentaries that have topped ratings charts on cable TV, and have been featured in numerous TV show and specials (including CSI: NY). The company's fourth feature film is currently airing on cable television. Additionally, they have a clothing line, a magazine, an iPhone app and now an upcoming comic book.

My mind reels at how bad this will be, even within the set of "really horrible ideas for comic books", which is not a small set.

I honestly don't think it's possible for a comic to capture the Unique Experience of this Lifestyle Brand. I did watch a little bit of the car-crash that was their "documentary" when it was on TV, and I believe that no comic book will be able to adequately re-create the experience of watching a bunch of badly-tattooed shrieking harpies fighting over a bottle of whiskey.

Can you imagine trying to describe, using only text and pictures, the pain of hearing Chloe Webb's continuous squeals of "Sid! Siiiiiid!" in Sid and Nancy? Or any line of Courtney Love's dialog in Straight to Hell? You can't successfully commit chalkboard-nails like that to paper.

This is what a Suicide Girls comic would have looked like in 1990 (Peter Bagge's Hate, #2). This picture is only slightly dated! See if you can spot the anachronisms!

Getting a lot of hits on this one... For those of you tuning in late, or who don't click my "previously" links, back in 2006 there was an earlier program of similar concept called "GLTerminal". This new "Cathode" program works a lot better, though.

For those of you on Linux (or using X11 on a Mac), you can accomplish a very similar thing by using the "apple2" module of my xscreensaver package, as detailed here (and also here and here). The underlying display module shared by the apple2, pong, m6502, and xanalogtv screen savers is actually simulating the hardware of an old CRT, rather than just doing an effect that kinda-sorta looks like it. Reading all of the comments in hacks/analogtv.c is well worth your time.

Update 2, 2012: Hey, as of release 5.19 in late 2011, the MacOS release of XScreenSaver includes stand-alone application versions of the Apple2 and Phosphor screen savers that are pre-configured to work as terminal emulators. Check them out.

Note the elephants in the lower left. Regular cable car service is mixed right in with the pachyderms and circus wagons and crowds line the streets. We're looking out a window of what would today be the San Francisco Shopping Centre, opposite the foot of Powell Street. The vacant lot would later become the Flood Building, still there today.